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In the heat of the mayoral campaign, candidate and Alderman Cara Spencer zeroed in on St. Louis’ broken 911 emergency call system, declaring that if she were mayor, fixing it would get priority attention. Not to be outdone, Tishaura Jones echoed Spencer’s assessment while asserting that the then-treasurer was the only candidate ready to “hit the ground running” with solutions. While Jones has spent much of her three months in office championing non-urgent causes such as transferring inmates from the city’s medium-security jail or cutting the police budget, one of the most urgent problems — the dysfunctional 911 call system — has gone from bad to worse.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Erin Heffernan reports, understaffing at the city’s 911 call center means people in need of urgent help aren’t getting it. On one recent afternoon, there were only two dispatchers to handle all emergency and nonemergency calls for a full eight-hour shift. The result was that callers had to wait up to eight minutes to speak to a human…
